


open my heart and let it bleed onto yours

by thermodynamicActivity (chlorinetrifluoride)



Series: The Collegestuck 'Verse [10]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - College/University, Collegestuck, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, F/M, Humanstuck, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Multi, Past Rape/Non-con, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Recreational Drug Use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-08
Updated: 2016-05-08
Packaged: 2018-06-07 05:11:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 4
Words: 11,918
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6786673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chlorinetrifluoride/pseuds/thermodynamicActivity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Your name is Simon, and you don’t like telling people about what happened, because either they feel sorry for you, they try to interfere, or both. Your choice was just that. A choice. Freely made. Fuck anyone who tries to suggest otherwise. Your name is Simon, and once upon a time, when you were sixteen, you were involved with a woman named Carolyn.</p><p>Your name is Yekaterina, and you would very much prefer it if your best friend from high school didn't drink himself to death behind that which he cannot change.</p><p>Your name is Krishna, and you don't know how to reach your roommate. What words will reach him over the twenty-foot wall he's erected around himself.</p><p>Your name is Marisol, and you never quite seem to say exactly what you need to tell Simon. You try anyway.</p><p>Her name is Carolyn, and even if they've been broken up for years, she still looms - larger than life - in his dreams, in his nightmares, in the back of his mind. For good reason.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. got a curse i cannot lift

**Author's Note:**

> Yet another casualty from my "go through the collegestuck tumblr and post stories I think are decent".  
> Simon was not always a cynical, drunken, self-destructive person. This is what happened.  
> Technically runs concurrently to every collegestuck story that spans the period between 1993 and 2000.  
> Sort of a sequel/prequel to "Notes From Undergrad".

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Most of the usual readers (who will probably be the only ones reading this) are familiar with the human names I've given the ancestors.  
> Just in case they're not...
> 
> Simon Cao = The Psiioniic  
> Carolyn Clark = The Condesce (sort of, I have two characters who are roughly analogous to the Condesce, and this is the more evil one by far)  
> Yekaterina "Cat" Levin = The Disciple  
> Krishna Vandayar = The Signless  
> Marisol Perez = Neophyte Redglare
> 
> Mind the warnings on this story, seriously. It's not pretty.

**_October 1993 - Simon Cao_ **

The first time you meet her is your second time at the Electric Warehouse. The guy at the door barely glances at your ID, the one you’d taken pains to procure, which states your date of birth as 2/2/1975. You melt into the crowd of light and sound, driving backbeat of the music jackhammering against the inside of your skull.

She’s standing at the bar, long legs, bronze skin, dark, curly hair, and a skin-tight purple dress. All you can do is blink at her as she grins, grins so wide that it makes you feel weightless.

“Isn’t it a little past your bedtime, guppy?” she asks you, stirring her drink with a toothpick. You shake your head, like a dog with water in its ears.

“Um.” You blink. She cackles, your face reddens, and she assures you that she isn’t laughing at you. She gestures to the empty seat next to her, and you take it, mouth still open wide in shock. 

She draws close so you can hear her, pressing her leg up against yours. She introduces herself as Carolyn Clark, and thankfully doesn’t ask you for your name immediately, because you’ve rather forgotten it. When you give it, she repeats it and draws out the syllables in a way that leaves you weak-kneed. 

“You’re kinda cute, you know that?” she asks, breath warm against your ear.

Okay, she definitely has to be bullshitting you now. 

“I am?”

“Oh yes,” she says, running one of her manicured fingers across your jawline. “Very cute.”

With that sparkle in her eye, you can almost believe it. She rises, and judging from the look on her face, expects you to do the same.

“Would you like to dance?”

“I can’t,” you confess.

You must have given the wrong answer, since her expression hardens. Or maybe it’s a trick of the light, because a second later, you’re certain you’ve imagined it. You laugh nervously, and she pulls you toward her.

“You’ll learn, Si. Or is it Simon?”

You shrug. “Whatever you want.”

“I’ll keep that in mind, then.”

She hands you a drink and it makes your head spin in the most delightful way. She’s in graduate school, she tells you, and she loves these raves, because whiling away time attending endless lectures is dreadfully dull. She turns to you again.

“So what school do you go to, Simon?”

“Uh…” You moisten your lips with your tongue and give the first one that comes to mind. “City College?”

“Really, now? I did undergrad there. Annoying commute to the lower east side, isn’t it?”

You nod, relieved that she bought it. “Yeah, it’s so tedious, you don’t even know.”

“Particularly tedious since CCNY is actually _far uptown,_ guppy. West 137th Street. _”_

Oh god, she’s played you. She’s played you and she must know you’re underage, and there’s a leaden weight in your gut. But she doesn’t leave. She merely smirks.

“It’s okay, though.” She winds a hand into your hair and tugs gently, bumping noses with you. “I’ll forgive a little white lie. I won’t tell if you don’t.”

You should have known then that she would draw you down, down, into her depths, into her wishes, into her whims, trying to mold you into the person she desired to you be, whenever she desired. You should have known that you would nearly drown in the attempt, that you would lose giant parts of yourself in a storm, and never quite find them again.

But you do not. She treats you as an equal (at least for a while), so unlike your parents, so unlike your teachers, and you cannot turn away from her unconditional positive regard.

She takes you back to her place, or, rather, her chauffeur does, since you two are too fucking blitzed to get back there alone.

“He’s with me,” Carolyn insists to the giant man in the doorway, who eyes you skeptically but ultimately steps aside to allow both of you entry. You still can’t believe she lives in a building in Gramercy of all places. She has to be loaded to the power of five.

Maybe you’re all strung out and mellow from the substances coursing through your veins but Carolyn’s vehemence makes you feel warm. Warm and wanted, which is a brand new sensation for you.

You want to just curl up and stop time here at this moment.

“Say hello to my new buoyfrond!” she continues with a giggle, and points to a little padded chair near a glass table. “Simon, you sit right there, okay?”

You can barely stand, but Giant Hulking Bastard guides you to your designated seat. 

He doesn’t seem to like you all that much. You can just tell. It’s all good, though, since Carolyn appears to be pissed at him about something. Her voice floats up like you’ve stuck your head underwater, and she’s still on the surface.

“Where’s my 8 ball?” she demands of the man with the dreadlocks. His frown deepens. She punches him in the arm, and repeats, “My 8 ball?”

You want to know why she needs to consult a magic 8 ball (signs point to wasted) until the guy takes a little baggie out of his pocket and holds it up for Carolyn.

Oh, yeah. That. That's a thing.

She grins, and snatches it from him. She switches the lights on, and holy shit, then you can see the entire apartment in all its glory.

This is the sort of place you don’t want to breathe in too hard, lest you disrupt something. Not like you can breathe all that hard. The chair upon which you have planted your skinny ass may or may not be worth more than your parents’ house. Carolyn sits down next to the glass table, practically on your lap, and surveys the contents of the bag.

“This seems reely light. Did you even weigh this shit before you bought it?”

Giant dude shrugs.

“Looked like motherfuckin’ three-five to me, but I defer to your judgment.”

“Of course you do. That’s why I pay you,” she replies, with a smile that shows off all of her perfectly white teeth.

“Your fucking parents pay me, sister.”

“That’s why I pay you _more._ ”

You let your eyes slide shut, and when you open them again, they’re arguing about something else.

“That nodding motherfucker over there, how old is he?” Giant Hulking Bastard wants to know.

“Nineteen, Irfan.”

“Caro, you know I know better than that. Don’t lie to me.”

“Nineteen. Going on twenty.” She shoves him roughly, losing her balance, and falling down upon the slate gray carpeting in the process. “Got it?”

It takes you a moment to realize that she’s talking about you. But you’re not nineteen, at least you don’t think you are. You blink. You’re not sure. Still, she looks so distressed, with her hair in disarray and her chin quivering. 

You’ll be nineteen for her, if that’s that’s what she wants. 

“Whatever you say,” he replies, stone-faced, and he might as well be taking the words out of your mouth.

**_November 1996 - Yekaterina Levin_ **

AC: >:33 I think it would be purrudent if mew reconsidered your relationship with Caro, to be honest.  
AC: >:33 I know you lived with her fur some time when you were pissed at your family, but that’s been over for a while.  
AC: >:33 This isn’t high school anymore.  
AC: >:33 It might be time to move on.  
TA: II can’t.  
AC: >:33 Why not?  
TA: It’s complicated.  
AC: >:33 Maybe if mew explain it, it’ll be less complicated.  
TA: II can’t, it’s just two fucking difficult two convey.  
AC: >:33 Simon, I am your friend.  
AC: >:33 And as your friend, I am concerned.  
TA: Stop trying two interfere, you’ll just make it worse between us.  
AC: >:33 Between you and her, or between you and me?  
TA: Both.  
TA: And don’t fucking guilt me, please.  
TA: II am begging you.  
AC: >:33 When mew broke up, you stopped going to all your classes and ended up on academic probation.  
AC: >:33 Then mew ended up hospitalized.  
TA: Yes, II remember.  
TA: She visited me all the time.  
TA: And changed her mind about our relationship.  
TA: She forgave me.  
AC: >:33 Only for you guys to crash and burn again.  
AC: >:33 I don’t purretend to be a relationship expert but she seems to be pretty fucking awful to and for you.  
TA: Okay, II partially agree with you, but...  
AC: >:33 But.  
TA: II need her.  
TA: She needs me.  
TA: II can’t explain, just take my word for it.  
AC: >:33 You’re determined to keep me wandering around in circles.  
TA: II’m sorry.  
AC: >:33 Fine, don’t listen to me.  
AC: >:33 I will be there to pick you up when you fall again, but I WILL ALSO say I told you so ad infintum.  
TA: II would be shocked if you didn’t.

**_February 2000 - Marisol Perez_ **

“So when did you actually lose your V-card?” Simon asks you.

A few years ago, you would have blushed the color of your glasses at such a personal question, but now? What’s the point?

“Whenever we started having sex, figured you might know.”

He actually chokes on his drink, and you mentally award yourself a point. Marisol: 1. Simon: 0. Still, he recovers quickly enough.

“Right, I forgot. You subscribe to that Catholic bullshit.”

You’ve a half mind to call him an irreverent bastard, but he’s probably heard that one from you before. Probably heard that one this week, come to think of it. It’s one of the nicknames in your repertoire, the others being such titles as “drunken fuck”, “massive dick”, and “that cynical douche”.

“Indeed, I do,” you reply. “What about you? When did you lose it? Who’d you lose it to?”

You don’t even know why you’re asking. You expect a tale full of swaggering bravado, as befitting his general attitude toward sex, but instead of some of epic saga of how he did the deed with five girls at once, shortly before exiting his dorm room to a standing ovation, he looks away from you and fiddles with his empty empty glass.

“Her name was Carolyn.”

"Only one woman?”

“That’s right.”

He goes on without waiting for a further response.

“I met her in a club, y’know, one of those places way downtown,” he says in almost complete monotone. He glances up at you. “Hey, Mari, d’you have a cigarette?”

There’s a faraway look in his eyes that unsettles you. You give him your penultimate smoke, and watch as his fingers shake on the inhale. His glasses have gone lopsided, but he doesn’t pay it any attention.

“But that was years and years ago,” he goes on, shrugging.

You quirk a curious eyebrow. “Years, and years ago?”

Another inhale, less shaky.

“Yeah, like, ‘93, ‘94ish, some shit like that. Think she was an NYU grad student.” He cards a hand through his jet black hair. “We dated for a while, and it and it was kind of nice. Scratch that, it was really nice.”

A prickling sensation needles up and down your spine, a little warning your body always gives you when shit’s about to head south. Math has never been your strong suit, but it doesn’t take a genius to subtract 1977 from 1993 and come to the right answer. He was seeing a graduate student. 

Maybe you should pour yourself a glass of wine as well, but you’re afraid it’ll make you throw up.

“She taught me a lot of things. Shit, she actually took me seriously as a person,” he says. “I was this lispy kid with a fake ID, she was a fucking knockout, and she didn’t even care. Yeah, we had problems, but what relationship doesn’t?”

“Problems,” you echo.

“Like maybe I was apprehensive about something she wanted to do, but she always set me straight. Pointed out that she’d never do anything to hurt me, not unless I wanted her to. And believe me, I did.”

You bite down on your tongue, hard. You taste blood.

“I see.”

There were times, he informs you, when she went a little too far. “But that was on me. I wasn’t clear enough, like, how was she supposed to know I wasn’t into it?”

Your mouth tastes like cigarettes and bile and copper-iron, and there’s Simon, sitting there with his usual air of nonchalance, but this time, the affectation is window-glass transparent. Swaggering Simon, drinking his wine. You reach out toward him, but your hand falters.

What can be said in response to something like that?

Simon scowls, and looks sullenly away.

“I shouldn’t have told you all that,” he finally says.

You swallow, trying to get the taste out of your mouth. You tap your fingers against the table. You glance toward him, then avert your gaze.

Little Marisol, always with her head in her books, always somehow managing to get in over her head.

You pour yourself a glass of wine. Simon gives you this tight smile, more grimace than anything else. You have no idea what to say, so you fall back on logic and rationality, law and order.

“You know, Simon, the statute of limitations f–”

“I don’t give a flying fuck about the statute of limitations,” he says, his face suddenly twisted in a rictus of fury. 

He stubs out his cigarette with particular vehemence. “Just do me a favor, and forget what I told you. Go back to being a bitch to me. I like it better that way.”

You shake your head gently. “It wasn’t your fault.”

He pounds his hand on the table, causing you to jump.

“What did I just _tell_ you?”

“God-fucking-damn,” you mutter. Then, you collect yourself. “Okay, I’m forgetting everything. Removing all data related to this conversation, deletion currently in progress.”

You need more wine for this.


	2. dream me, oh dreamer

**Revision, 1996 - Simon Cao**

You lie to yourself sometimes. You recall the past in a way where its jagged edges won’t cut you as you stumble toward the future.

You didn’t lose your virginity to a graduate student when you were sixteen, no. That never happened, you tell yourself.

That is not how it happened.

It was an evening during your first year of college, with a pair of chatoyant green eyes sparkling in the half-light of your dorm room, taking you in, betraying amusement.

“I have no idea what I’m doing,” she confesses, her hand creeping tentatively into your briefs. A bolt of arousal, entwined with guilt, shoots through you. You pull her close, brush her red hair out of the way, and smile against her neck.

“When’th that ever thtopped you?” you joke, with an eyebrow wiggle. “It’th not going to jump up and bite you.”

She laughs and socks you with a pillow.

You can’t finish what you start, though. Your hands feel tainted, because you are tainted. You don’t want to spread whatever affliction lurks under your skin to someone like her.

Yekaterina, who went to high school with you, who spent time she could have been studying for the SAT worrying about your state of mind. You were kind of an idiot, then. You’re kind of an idiot now, if the rum bottle you’ve stashed in your bookcase is any indication.

So you turn away and curl up, retreat to a twilight state of unreality, repeating nonsense phrases that seem soothing to your mind.  Clang associations, your psychiatrist called them. You rhyme until the thoughts recede to a dull ache.

Cat lets her hand hover over your shoulder, but doesn’t touch you. She gives you an old towel to mop up your face with, and watches you until you relax.

So that wasn’t the evening you lost your virginity.

Maybe it was two weeks later, the day she came over wearing nothing but a see-through nightie under a trench coat. You’re pretty sure it was that day. It should have been that day.

Maybe it was two years before, when —

No, because if it were two years before, then —

(Violet dress, stiletto heels, leather cuffs, downtempo, zinfandel) 

You wish your memory were as tenuous as your sanity.

**_Autonomy - 1994_ **

“You really are lucky to have a gillfrond like me, you know,” Carolyn says, tugging your jeans down to your ankles. “Someone to keep your in check. Someone to make sure you stay on your best behavior.”

She shoots a derisive glance at your old scars. That’s part of the arrangement, that you stop taking out your frustrations on your forearms. It works, surprisingly enough. You would never want Carolyn to think less of you.

When she blindfolds you and refuses to turn off the light, that’s when you panic. You can’t stand the brightness. You can’t stand the leaden weight in your stomach.

“Caro, pleathe.”

“Please, what?”

You point a shaking finger to the lamp. “You know I don’t like that. Yellow.”

She removes the blindfold and nods, then reminds you of the necessity of testing your limits. That’s all she wants to do: help you become a better, less fearful version of yourself.

“Don’t be afraid, Simon,” she says gently. “There’s nothing to be afraid of.”

She must be right.

She knows more about this than you do.

At night, you sleep next to her, and it’s dark, and warm, and nice. There are certain things people say when they’re on the verge of slumber, deep secrets that would shrivel in the day, and Carolyn lets one slip.

“You’re the only person who’s ever understood me,” she tells you. You turn over, smile at the sight of her sleep-tangled hair, and kiss her forehead.

“Same here.”

You’ve always wondered if she was a little crazy, but figured that it was just as well. You are also deranged.

At least she cares. You will be whoever she wants you to be. You want to be whoever she wants you to be.

At long last, it’s a sense of direction.

**_Imbalance - 1995_ **

Sometimes she touches you and nothing feels right. Her nails scrape down your back, and her tone feels so contemptuous (genuinely contemptuous, like she hates you), and all you want to do is retch. But her grin at the end, all blissed out and free, makes it worth it. You think it’s worth it. Cat asks you how it’s going with you two, and you give her all the truth and none of the honesty.

You wonder what it might be like to kiss her.

You wonder what it might be like to use a brillo pad to scour yourself clean in the shower.

You wonder, you wonder a lot of things.

Carolyn makes you breakfast, and you can tell that they’re pancakes, that they’re just as good as they were the last time she made them, but they go down like glue. You barely chew before you swallow. Caro winks at you, pressing her leg against your thigh, and murmuring something about having better uses for your mouth.

You snort, ask her if that’s an order, and everything is okay for a while.

Everything’s okay until it isn’t.

**Platitudes - 2000**

Dr. Aronson reminds you that you’re safe.

But as long as you possess the gift/curse of cognition, you will never be safe.

Safer, perhaps. But safe? Safety is a delusion, the span of time between two triggers. 

You tell Krishna this, he shakes his head, and asks you how he can help.

You don’t know.

You never do.


	3. transfer my tragedy

_**March 2000 - Simon Cao** _

You and Marisol sit on one of the benches in Riverside Park, watching the last vestiges of the dying sunlight. She has her skateboard tucked under her arm. You have a cigarette in one hand, and a 40 oz bottle of Olde English 800 in the other. In other words, a normal Tuesday,

“I wish they’d just get married already and leave me the hell alone,” you mutter, taking a long swig. Marisol gives you a sidelong glance through her red shades.

“No, you don’t.”

You tell her how presumptuous it is for her to assume that she knows what you’re thinking, as if she can see into your mind or some bullshit like that. She counters with the fact that you’re about as predictable as the weather, though occasionally more volatile. Occasionally.

“You push people away so they won’t have the chance to leave you,” she sighs. “And then, on the off chance that they do leave, you get all bent out of shape.”

You snort, take another drink. “Ever consider pursuing a career in clinical psych?”

“I’d have to listen to other people’s problems.”

“Like you wouldn’t do that as a lawyer.”

“I’d get paid considerably _more_ to listen to other people’s problems my way,” she deadpans.

Of course, she’s right on all counts. You won’t tell her so, because she can be downright insufferable given sufficient provocation. However, there’s something she hasn’t considered, something which has been eating away at you ever since you entered into that relationship… triad… thing, with Krishna and Cat.

You stare at your hands in the encroaching darkness, and know that they have been tainted. Just like the rest of you. You’re not trying to be melodramatic; this is a basic fact of your existence.

Your continued existence.

The existence where you wake up screaming some nights because you can feel Carolyn’s fingers gripping your hips, dancing across the waistband of your pants, teasing you, but not pleasantly. More like an animal playing with its prey before it swallows it whole.

You are not like the others. You are not like the others. You will never be like the others because you have been molded into something else entirely, by whatever the fuck it is you went through from 1993 to 1995.

_(Dialectics, Simon. Rational mind, emotional mind, wise mind, like that manual you got from the therapist Dolores recommended._

_Thesis, antithesis, synthesis._

_Thesis: The world is a fundamentally safe place where terror does not lurk around every corner._

_Antithesis: The world is a dangerous place, full of awful people, and the exceptions to the rule are merely that: exceptions._

_Synthesis: Pure, absolute, crippling, dissociative confusion._

_That’s you. Synthesis.)_

Maybe Krishna, with his nightmares that begin with men in navy blue and end with a nightstick blow to the skull, has a faint idea. But he’d never trusted the cops, never pretended they were anything but a state-sanctioned gang tasked with protecting the white and affluent

You and Carolyn, though?

You and Miss Clark, the beautiful woman who lived in an apartment with a spectacular view of Gramercy Park?

She took you seriously as a human being. She treated you not like some gangly teenager, but as a person worthy of love, worthy of her affection. You consequently thought the sun rose and set on her. You surrendered to her your soul, your dreams, your sense of self, your ability to…

_(say consent and that arrangement becomes a word you dare not contemplate, even silently.)_

You figured out what she was, though. You realized her capabilities, her potential for infinite tenderness, along with its equal and opposite: her potential for relentless cruelty. And yet, you stayed. You even moved in with her at the start of 1994, sixteen years old, with all your worldly belongings in a suitcase.

Maybe the doctors are right, maybe there was a power imbalance between you and her, the graduate student halfway through her twenties. How correct could they be, though? They weren’t there. They didn’t see it.

Ultimately, you chose to yield. You offered her your autonomy, receiving a collar and (un)conditional positive regard in return. That has to count for something, that you _made_ the conscious decision. That, and the fact that she needed you as much as you needed her. It was a precarious equilibrium.

A snippet from a David Bowie song occurs to you: _you are not a **victim** , you just **scream** with boredom._

You aren’t. You aren’t. You would never call yourself such a thing.

Carolyn was the better part of a foot shorter than you, and barely a hundred and ten pounds. You could have fought her off, had it come down to that. But it never did, because you never refused her, because you wanted it, you wanted everything, you _did._

_You did._

( _Your name is Simon Cao, you are seventeen, and you are flying on so many substances that you cannot count them all, even if you could count. You lie in her bed, your bed, surrounded by tyrian purple hangings, nodding off every now and then._

_Carolyn straddles you, wearing not a stitch of clothing._

_“And we are going to have so much fun this evening,” she says, all starry-eyed from coke. She notices how hard it is for you to keep your eyes open and swats the inside of your thigh. “You payin’ attention, guppy?”_

_“Yes,” you reply. You shake your head to clear your mind of the windblown haze. “You know it.”_

_She balls up the leash tighter, yanks you up toward her, the collar straining against the back of your neck. You inhale sharply, something in your stomach flip-flopping. You remember the dying fish at the market in Chinatown, mouths opening and closing, eyes glassy, and struggle to think of something else._

_“Yes, what?” she asks, eyes flashing._

_“Yes, mistress. I’m sorry.”_

_She loosens her grip, smiles, and plants a kiss on your forehead._

_“That’s betta.”_

_She pulls you into an asphyxiating kiss, laughs into your mouth when your hands roam, but something is off. You’ve done this so many times, had this done so many times. But right now? You don’t know what’s wrong, but you don’t want to keep going._

_Besides, you have a test tomorrow. You should be studying._

_Why did you get so blitzed? How did you get so blitzed? What are you even doing? Drugged out fear suffuses through you, and you turn your head away from her._

_“No,” you think weakly._

_She tries to palm you through your pants._

_“Red,” you manage, breath hitching in your chest. “Mistress, red. I can’t. Not tonight.”_

_She takes the leash in one hand again._

_“I don’t know,” she says. “I’ll make you feel so good. You want to feel good, right? You want to do good, right?”_

_She’s testing your limits, and you want to pass the test. Of course you want to do good. You have only ever wanted to do good._

_But the room is rocking back and forth, and… what are you doing, exactly? Why isn’t she stopping? She yanks your jeans down to your ankles, then crawls back up to you, pressing her body against yours all the while. You cup her cheek, staring her straight in the eye, those blown wide pupils._

_“Carolyn,” you beg. “Caro, please.”_

_“How could I say no?” she smirks._

_For one fleeting instant, you’re sure she’ll unhook the leash, and you’re so thankful that she understands, so grateful to have someone like her, but she touches you._

_She keeps touching you, and more besides, shoving you down against the mattress, hair hanging around your face like a curtain. She goes further, faster, anywhere and everywhere, her annoyance at your hesitation long gone. As long as you don’t give it too much thought, it feels wonderful, just as wonderful as she is._

_She always takes such special care of you._

_Her bodyguard slash babysitter slash giant Turkish dude her parents pay to watch her pulls her off you at some point._

_Giant Hulking Bastard picks her up, as she kicks and screams, pounding her fists against his chest, and carries her off to another room. Locks her in it, by the sound of it. You hear her breaking things, screeching furiously, and flinch. Curl up and try to make yourself small. You’d run but you don’t even think you can stagger at the moment._

_“You alright, motherfucker?” Giant Hulking Bastard asks you, once he returns._

_You did good. Carolyn said so. Said you were the most wonderful boyfriend ever, that she loved you above all else. You’re fine. You should be fine._ _You sit up and open your mouth, but nothing comes out. You blink at this man, and he hands you a glass of water that you immediately let fall to the floor. You try to apologize, but you’ve forgotten how to formulate words._

 _Carolyn called you perfect, so why do you feel sick?_ )

The truth is that you must have wanted everything, otherwise you would have _done something_. And you wouldn’t have tried to kill yourself after Carolyn broke up with you. You would have celebrated instead.

You aren’t like those women who convene on campus every year with their candles and their signs and their chants of “ _yes means yes, and no means no!_ ” The ones who are determined to take back the night.

You have no specific night to take back anyway. Take back the year, more like. Two years, actually. And don’t take them back. Erase them entirely, like the blackboard in the lab class you teach. Obliterate them. Rewind to your sophomore year of high school, when it was just you and Cat strolling around Washington Square Park.

You are something else. You are not a ~~victim~~ of ~~rape~~. You swear it.

Still, Carolyn has gouged holes in your vocabulary with her brand of love, and twisted entire areas of Manhattan into minefields of memory you dare not venture. And if you wanted it all, then why do you dream the way you do?

Why do you feel damaged? Something here is logically inconsistent.

You put a cigarette in your mouth and make to light it until you realize you have the wrong end in your mouth. You rectify the situation, fingertips shaking on the filter.

Marisol gazes at you, concerned, the glare of the sodium lamp glinting off her glasses. She’s such a tiny young woman, practically drowning in the sweatshirt she’s borrowed from Cat. You feel what you can only describe as the emotional equivalent to a dissonant chord.

_(No. Stop. Red. Please. Cease. I can’t. I’m sorry. Please don’t. No more. No more.)_

She reaches out and puts a tentative hand on your shoulder.

_(I said no. I said no. I said no.)_

You tense up, lines between past and present blurring like candlewax to a steady flame. You shove Marisol from you so roughly that she tumbles off the bench and onto the ground. Her glasses go flying.

“Don’t fucking _touch_ me!” you shout, jumping to your feet.

She slides back several inches, her hands raised defensively, her eyes trained on you.

“Simon…?” Marisol asks.

Marisol Perez, sophomore Marisol, who buys you hot cheese popcorn, argues revolutionary ideology with Krishna, wants desperately to make out with Cat, and sings along to 3LW songs in her underwear, using a hairbrush as a makeshift microphone, when she thinks nobody’s awake enough to witness.

Oh _no._

You cover your mouth with both hands.

You pick up her glasses and hand them back to her. You offer her help getting up, which she refuses. She rises, brushes herself off, stretches, and continues to stare at you. Not quite concern anymore, no, now there’s some fear mixed in.

You didn’t think it was possible to feel worse than you did before. You were wrong.

“Are you alright, Mari? Holy shit, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to… I would never, I just… I was thinking and…”

You trail off helplessly.

She shakes her head at you. You wait for her to turn on her heel and walk away, cursing you out in Spanish all the while, but she just stands there, looking mildly irritated about the whole thing.

“Man, I knew you were out of it,” she says. She slings her bag back over her shoulder. “Shoulda asked before touching you, my bad.”

It’s official. You’ve fallen into the twilight zone. You knocked Mari over, could have actually injured her, and instead of yelling at you - which you would very well deserve - she says _“my bad”._

“I’m sorry,” you repeat. “I am so sorry, you don’t even…”

She rolls her eyes.

“We’re good. You had one of your freaky vision things, bugged out like usual, but no harm done. I promise,” she continues. “Are _you_ okay, though?”

She makes it sound so simple, manages to sand your state of mind down into something almost non-threatening. You don’t know why, but it’s reassuring. That, and she’s still here. That’s also reassuring.

You pick up your 40 and your cigarettes. “I’ll be fine.”

“No, you won’t,” she says with a sigh. “I mean, you probably will be, but not right now.”

She asks you your name, the date, the year, where you are, and who she is. Once you’ve answered these questions to her satisfaction, she walks back to the bench, opens your bag, digs out a pill bottle, and passes it to you.

“Are these the ones for anxiety?” she asks. “You may be surprised to know I can’t read this shit.”

She laughs at her little joke, and in spite of yourself you snort as well, feeling lighter. You squint in the faint light and read the label - Lorazepam, 1 mg.

“Yep. You got ‘em.”

She pumps a victorious fist into the air.

You uncap the bottle and dry-swallow two of the pills. You’re about to sit back down on the bench, when you notice her walking toward the park exit. Perhaps you were remiss in thinking she would not leave you right here.

“Uh, Mari…” you begin nervously. “Where’re you going?”

“ _We_ are going to get pizza, because _I_ haven’t eaten in twelve hours,” she says, and you’re not about to argue with any of that. You haven’t eaten either. “Then, we’re coming back here so I can perfect my radical stunts while you drink your forty and try not to think too hard. Whatever you feel like doing, really.”

You take a drag off your cigarette and consider her offer. She doesn’t try to rush you in the least, content to stand around and roll up the sleeves on Cat’s sweater again so it’ll fit her.

“Sounds good to me,” you finally respond. “Although…”

“Although?”

“When we come back here,” you gesture to the park, the benches, the halfpipe. You swallow. “When we come back here, do you think we could just talk for a while?”

She turns to face you, something fleetingly gentle in her expression, so gentle that it throws you off balance. She nearly reaches out for you, but rethinks the action. Instead, she chews on her lip, and nods.

“Yeah, sure, we can talk. We can always talk, you know that.”

It occurs to you that out of everyone in your quartet of friends, Marisol knows the least about certain events. You’ve talked to her about it exactly once, and gave her only the broad strokes.

Unlike Cat, she didn’t attend high school with you for three years and witness the myriad ways in which you changed from your sophomore year to your senior year. Unlike Krishna, she never shared a dorm room with you, meaning that telling her certain facts about yourself so someone could drag your ass back to reality at four in the morning never became a necessity.

Still, you think she should know. Not just because you could have seriously injured her earlier, but because you genuinely want to explain. She’s a good friend of yours now, and she’s told you about many of her own insecurities and issues. You feel like you can trust her.

You want to tell someone who’s not going to write it down on a clipboard and put it in some file. You have nothing against your therapists, but you’re still a little leery of revealing all your innermost secrets to someone who can have you hospitalized with the flick of a pen.

Most of all, you want to get the story straight, the whole thing in its entirety, at last.

Might as well be to an aspiring attorney, you figure, as you pay for your food and hers.

The pizza at Tallini’s is legendarily greasy and reheated unevenly every now and then, but it’s 75 cents a slice and neither of you is in a position to be choosy. You make another stop at 7-11 to grab another 40. The faintest disapproval passes across Mari’s features as you hand the clerk your driver’s license and make the transaction, but she says nothing.

You walk back to Riverside Park, side by side, in relative silence.

With you two seated on the ground instead of the benches, you put your hand on her skateboard, swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. She rolls her eyes, laughs, and calls you a dumbass.

“I….”  The park begins to spin.  “Back in junior year….”

Marisol gives you that same gentle stare, and insists that you don’t have to go any further than you wish, but you really do. You need to do this.

So you start with the club downtown in 1993, your fake ID, and the sophisticated woman in the violet dress.


	4. mirror my malady

_**March 2000 - Simon Cao** _

It’s half past hangover in the morning, halfway through your first Bloody Mary, and halfway through one of Krishna’s rambling lectures. Unfortunately, a few of his words stick in your mind like stubborn flakes of dandruff. God, you hate it when he gets going this early. It means he’s not planning to shut the fuck up anytime soon.

He stirs an excess of creamer into his coffee, and sits down on the edge of your bed.

“…as you know, tonight will be the Take Back the Night demonstration, an event I once more encourage you to consider attending.”

He must anticipate the effect these words would have on you, since he manages to duck before you can even think of hurling one of your old calculus textbooks at his face. Exasperated, he shakes his head, and resumes lecturing.

“You can’t keep this sort of thing bottled up. You _shouldn’t have to_ keep this sort of thing bottled up.”

You flip him off with one hand and consume your drink with the other, telling him that talking about your feelings is what weekly therapy is for. Another heavy sigh from his approximate direction. 

Annoyed, you realize then that you’re out of tomato juice, and you’re way too lazy to walk five blocks to get more. You settle for scowling at your roommate.

“Has it ever occurred to you that I don’t want to go to this stupid thing?” you ask him. “You think I want to hear about a whole bunch of chicks complaining about guys I’ve never met doing terrible things to them? You think I want to remember any of the old shit?”

He says nothing, at first.

“Perhaps witnessing other accounts of such heinous betrayal will help you to realize that you are not alone, that you in fact, never hav–”

You interrupt him mid-lecture by loudly dropping the Stoli bottle on your desk. Once he’s quiet, you uncap it and pour yourself half a glass.

As the old refrain goes, you, Simon, are an unmitigated disaster. At least you’ve cut your fondness for swilling hard liquor like it’s going out of style down to once a month or so. Small victories.

You drink the contents straight without grimacing, you have practice after all, much to Krishna’s consternation.

“This is the sound of me wanting me to hear about half of Barnard’s issues,” you tell him, after you’re finished. “Anyway, if you think it’s so helpful, why aren’t you going?”

He gives you some bullshit about it not being his event to attend.

Yeah, okay. Undoubtedly, he must be afraid of the throngs of marching candle-waving women in the same way you are. 

Though you aren’t exactly afraid of them, more like annoyed by them. You have to put on your headphones and turn them straight up from _“deafening”_ to _“cochlea liquefying_ ” in order to drown out the chants of _“Yes means yes!”_ and _“No means no!”_

“One of the attendees from last year’s demonstration might drop by to speak with you in the evening,” he goes on. “But don’t worry, it’s someone you know.”

You rack your brains for anyone who might fit such a bill, come up with Cat, but decide that if she’d ever been sexually assaulted, the entrails of her assailant would have ended up spread out down Eastern Parkway as a warning to anyone else.

She would have mounted their head on a pike and marched with that, at the front of crowd. Would have certainly made the whole thing a lot more entertaining.

That leaves one of your one-night stands, and you don’t even have to tell Krishna how eager you are for one of them to show up at your door at 8 PM to tell you about sexual violence and implore you to come with them into the land of depressive recollection.

You’d sooner jump off the Triboro bridge. 

That’s probably why Krishna bundles up his books and gets ready to leave before you can retort.

“Thanks for telling one of your social justice dipshits intimate details about my life,” you call, as he walks out. “Can’t tell you how much I appreciate it!”

He’s already gone, so your words echo to no one. You mix yourself yet another drink - well, not mix, more like pour - and ask yourself if you’re still sober enough to teach your 11 AM class.

Since you’re not slurring, and able to walk in a straight line, you settle for showering and dousing yourself in aftershave, then walking to East Campus to teach a bunch of wide-eyed freshmen about line integrals.

As you scrawl equations across the blackboard, it occurs to you that a few of them might show up tonight, that you might see them there, assuming you go. You gaze at your students with their mostly babyish faces and the very thought of that makes you want to throw up.

If any of them have questions, you might vomit instead of explaining the concepts.

Thankfully this is your only class to teach for the day. 

You’re a senior, so you’ve earned the right to skip the rest, go back to your room, lie face down on your filthy sheets, blast Public Enemy, and pretend nobody else on earth exists.

You’ll never get over the fact that Take Back the Night is held in mid-March, right around Carolyn’s birthday. It’s as if the entire universe revels at the chance to spit in your face whenever possible.

Barely thinking, you pour yourself a full glass of vodka - great, now the bottle’s finished - and sip from it quietly.

You sign onto AOL and ask another one of your fellow Physics majors for the homework, telling them that you’re dreadfully ill with Spanish Flu to the power of Ebola. You don’t have to exactly pretend with them; your ability to show up for class shitfaced and still make straight A’s is something of a legend in the department. Nevertheless, you do.

When your glass is empty, you start on the brandy, nevermind that it makes you think of one person and one person only. It’s not like you have to bullshit yourself, you’ve evolved past that defense mechanism, somehow.

Hours go by, with you operating in this fashion.

If Krishna returns in the interim, you don’t notice, and he’s gone just as quickly. Probably the best for the both of you, lest either of you get put on disciplinary probation for another fist-fight.

At a quarter to eight, you hear a knock at the door.

You groan, press the pillow against your face, and consider smothering yourself. If the visitor didn’t have to sign in at the front desk, and security didn’t have to call up to your room, that means it’s a fellow Columbia student. But the fact that they didn’t just turn the key in the door and come inside means it’s neither Cat nor Krishna.

Must be his social justice activist friend dipshit alleged one night stand of yours. You need more fortification. You dig through your sock drawer until your find your Ativan, and pop three.

You rehearse the speech you’d tenuously prepared for this, one that amounts to an order to “ _go the fuck away”_ , given slightly more politely than that. It’s not until you’ve already unlatched the door and gone halfway to letting it swing open that it occurs to you that you’re only wearing your boxers and a wifebeater.

(Didn’t Krishna give you a lecture on why that name was problematic?)

The person in your doorway is decidedly not a social justice dipshit or a one night stand of yours. Well, not entirely.

“What a pleasant surprise, Simon,” she says, tone cool as always.

She peers at you through her red glasses, and you turn to let her in. Sometimes providence doesn’t wholly suck.

You dig a bottle of Coke, one you use solely as a mixer, out of your mini-fridge and hand it to her. You’d get a glass for her, but you’re too lazy. You point in the vague direction of Krishna’s desk, to his neatly washed mugs, so she gets the idea.

“Might wanna get a move on, Mari,” you tell her. “Some social justice dipshit’s coming to drag me to Take Back the Night.”

She plops down onto your bed. “Really, now?”

You don’t have time for her passive-aggressive sarcastic nonsense. Not tonight, when the name of the game is to drink yourself insensate before the godawful chanting starts. You pluck your eyeglasses off the nightstand and cram them onto your face without breaking them.

“Yeah, and unless you wanna be part of the fallout, you should probably go back the way you came.”

That’s when you notice there’s half a sheet of oaktag, curled up and held closed by a single rubber band, sitting at her feet. While you might be the better part of two thirds of the way to shitfaced, you’re no idiot.

“Don’t tell me he’s roped you into this bullshit, too,” you mutter.

Marisol gives you a wan smile and shakes her head.

“Hard to rope me into something I suggested,” she replies. “He merely presented me with an opportunity.”

So this is the recompense you receive for baring your soul to another human being, to giving her the whole account the way you never have: having her take your anguish and attempt to twist it to serve her activism. She wants to put you on display like some sort of caged animal.

This is why you never trust people - friends, families, therapists, doctors - it always amounts to the same level of horseshit in the end.

While you ruminate and grow progressively angrier at her, Marisol snaps the rubber band and lets the sheet unfold upon your floor, in a motion so abrupt that it interrupts your thoughts.

 _“This is what I was wearing in 1996. Did I deserve it?”_ the poster reads, in meticulously painted cursive, covering the entire space.

Your mouth drops open, and you look up.

She’s got on her high school sweatshirt, some nondescript jeans, and a baby-blue pair of Nike high-tops. Oh, and her hair’s pulled back, and she’s got on hoop earrings. Not as if you really pay much attention either way, but you can’t recall having ever seen her wear anything like that before.

So the same vertiginous nausea that overtook you while you were teaching earlier resurges, except this time you’re certain you’ll throw up if you respond. You stare at her, slackjawed and rendered silent.

“I was thinking you might want to come with me,” she says, wiping her mouth on the back of her sleeve, her gaze as unyielding as ever. Perhaps you’ve imagined it, but there’s the hint of a quaver in her voice.

You subtract 1981 from 1996.

_14 or 15, depending on the month._

_Oh, no. Oh, no, no, no, no._

You recall last month’s tryst, the one that ended with a sunflower left at her door.

_(You needed to make sure you weren’t exploring uncharted territory, because you were decidedly not the person who should have been tasked with showing anyone their first sexual experience._

_“Have you ever done it with a guy before?”_

_“Probably.”_

_“Have you ever done it before?”_

_“Yes.”_

_“Are you sure?”_

_“…yes.”_

_You didn’t really believe her, but you didn’t feel like arguing.)_

You grab your brandy bottle and take a healthy gulp, verging on a chug, searching for the words, for any words, for anything. Even an apology for thoughts you never voiced. She doesn’t break eye contact with you. You need something to puke in, fast. If need be, you’ll stick your head out the window.

You stare at her again.

“You…”

She quirks a curious eyebrow. _“I.”_

Your hands shake on the bottle, which she confiscates from you. All you can do is look at her helplessly.

“You never told me.” 

It shouldn’t sound accusatory - she’s not under any obligation to divulge such a thing to anyone - but it does.

“I never saw reason to,” she says. “I did not want anyone’s pity, well-intentioned or otherwise.”

If that doesn’t sound like the first thing you said to her after you partially opened your Pandora’s Box of a high school career for her - “ _Just do me a favor, and forget what I told you. Go back to being a bitch to me. I liked it better that way.”_ \- you don’t know what does.

You nod, swallowing back vomit and tears. You don’t have any right, not in front of her.

“I get it,” you reply. “But why now, then?”

She removes her glasses and fixes you in her teal, slightly filmy gaze. Beneath her shades, it had been unwavering, but here, like this, you can see the faint weariness. She exhales once.

“Because I thought you would understand. I’m sorry if I’ve overstepped my bounds.”

“No,” and you pound your hand against the adjacent wall for emphasis. “No, you didn’t overstep anything, don’t worry about shit like that, Mari, fuck.”

“Okay. That’s good, then.”

You have so many questions flying through your head, and none of them are polite (or even appropriate).

_What happened? Were you sober? (Tell me you weren’t sober.) Who did this? How old were they? Did you know them? Did you love them? Who did you tell first? Did you tell anyone else? (Well, obviously you said something to Krishna, if you’re here.) Did you report it? Did you want to report it? Do you want to report it?_

_Were you angry about it? Are you still angry about it?_

_Do you ever study your ass off just to stay up? Just so you can stave off the inevitable moment when you drop into slumber, and subsequently awaken screaming yourself hoarse from the flood of memories?_

_Do you have problems with reality testing? Does your mind ever fuzz into white noise when you think too hard about certain things?_

_Do you have any triggers? Have I ever crossed them?_

_Who did this? Who let this happen?_

_Are you okay? Are you okay?_

_I’m sorry if I apologize, I know it’s useless, but that’s all I have right now._

You open your mouth to give voice to any number of these statements.

However, something closes in your throat.

You refrain from puking on her sweatshirt, but you do burst into tears, gasping for air, the room flickering before you. You rock back and forth, utterly undone, and holy shit, you must look even crazier than usual. She doesn’t need that from you.

So with much effort, you marshal your histrionic crap into a facsimile of composure.

Meanwhile, her face could be carved of marble for all the emotion it betrays. She leans in, and both of her hands close over yours. It’s hard to let go of some of yourself and give into her comfort, but perhaps her need to give is greater than or equal to your need to take.

(Fucking pathetic, Simon.)

“I’m so sorry,” you choke out.

She shakes her head and holds on tighter. “I’m sorry, too. I shouldn’t have said anything. This has to be way harder on you.”

You want to refute that statement, blow it to bits with the undeniable logic of fact, but your ability to verbalize remains spotty. You’re holding on like that, hands linked beside your nightstand, when you smell the slightly sour aroma of wine on her breath.

You let one of her cool hands drop onto the bed.

Not like you have the right to judge, but… fuck that, you totally have a right to judge, because you know exactly where that path leads.

“You’ve been drinking.”

The corners of her mouth twitch. She retorts with something like, “Excellent deduction, Watson.”

“Why?”

She puts her glasses back on, her first line of defense, and sighs.

“I’ve learned from last year that perhaps total sobriety is overrated on certain occasions,” she says airily. “At any rate, don’t worry about me. That st 

As you sit on your bed, in your cozy warm dorm room, guilt bowls you over with the force of a typhoon.

uff, the shit that happened–” _(oh, look, she’s taken to using your euphemisms)_ “–all of that barely affects me now.”

You scoff and roll your eyes.

“Which is why you’ve been drinking.”

She kicks idly at the sheet of oaktag, and while she’ll still look you in the eye, you can sense the tension in her frame. Being close to her is like sitting beside a wire with a strong electrical current running through it.

“I stated that my circumstances no longer affect me the way they once did, but said nothing about everyone else’s. Believe me. Out there, a lot of them will want to tell their stories.” She eyes your brandy bottle almost experimentally, and then seems to decide better of it. “Besides, you drink to numb your affect all the time, and barely seem worse for the wear. The fact that your mood stabilizers hardly work, aside. I am not on medication, so...”

If the rationalizations you’ve offered others for your behavior were small-time bullshit, she’s just served you an entire bullshit pie. But moreover, and more damningly, it sounds like she got the idea to hit the bottle straight from you. Never once during your trek down self-destruction lane did you really consider the influence you might have on another. Maybe that you’d have an effect on them, you’re not that dense, but not that someone would follow in your footsteps.

“Just because I do something doesn’t mean that you should do it. You’re way too good for that,” you tell her, needing her to get it. “There’s a reason that Krishna calls my shitty coping mechanisms shitty.”

“Is that so?” she asks, calm. Her demeanor rankles you.

“That’s so,” you grit out.

“Therefore, if I’m to follow this, your methods are horrible enough for you, but too horrible for me,” she replies.

“That’s not what I said.”

“That’s exactly what you said. Furthermore, I am eighteen, an adult according to the law, and I’d appreciate it if you stop blaming yourself for decisions I’ve consciously made.”

You didn’t realize you were nervously pulling at your hair until you throw your hands up in the air and feel the sensation dissipate.

“You said you got the idea from me.” You stare at the floor, at the sign.

She rolls her eyes. “You hardly have a monopoly on the concept of drinking away your sorrows. This is college.”

Yeah, no shit. But, like…

You mean to tell her something else, but she’s already shrugging back into her jacket, slinging her bag over one shoulder, and tucking her skateboard under her arm.

“Guilt without action is meaningless,” she says, opening your door and stepping outside. “And while I am here if you need me, and apologize if this comes off as tactless, I do not wish to play party to your cycles of self-flagellation, particularly where they are unwarranted. I have a prior engagement to attend to.”

You down another shot of brandy, musing all the while that only Marisol could get more articulate while hammered.

“I see.”

“Alright, then.”

She’s out the door and halfway to the elevator before you call out to her.

“Wait up for a fucking minute. I gotta get dressed, okay?”

She glances back into your room, as you struggle to put on clothes and lace your boots, with something like surprise dawning on her face for the first time in months. You throw a scarf around your neck, and start walking before you have time to regret the action.

The elevator descends. Sweat beads on the back of your neck. Marisol stares straight ahead. You mentally thank her for it. She interlaces her arm with yours once you reach ground level, and you thank her harder.

Like this, you could be her boyfriend, just there to offer support. You don’t have to be _part_ of the march to be part of it, you think dizzily. You focus on putting one foot in front of the other, and Marisol leads you forward, toward the gathering crowd with their posters and flickering candles.

She lets go of you momentarily to accept a candle from an upperclassman.

You pull your lighter out of your pocket and light the wick. She unrolls her sign. You will yourself to relax. Your gaze darts from the crowd, to the trees, to the streetlights, to the library far off in the distance.

Once you can deflect no longer, you chance a look at the people around you. Nearly all women, all solemn-faced, all speaking to each other in hushed tones. Occasionally, they glance at you, and their whispering intensifies, at least in your estimation.

You focus on your feet again, but you can sense the hostility, the phantom voices around you, gathering in intensity, marking you as an **Other**. An **Intruder**. A dull roar against you.

The worst thing is that you are one. You’re trespassing. You didn’t fight back. You knew what you were getting into. You are not _Like Them_. You are, the way you always have been, the way you always will be, something else entirely.

Still, you’ll play it cool for Marisol. You owe her that much.

She steps ahead of you and turns around, so you’re eye-to-eye once more.

Even in the semidarkness, you can tell that she’s assessing you. She blows out her candle and offers you her arm.

“C’mon, Si,” she says, louder than necessary. “I changed my mind. It’s too cold out for this shit.”

Funny how she’s the blind one, and you’re the one who lives in Hartley, but invariably, she’s the one dragging you back to your building. You have the presence of mind to flash your ID to the security guard, and nearly make it to the elevator. 

Then, you slide down the wall to a sitting position, the voices continuing with their vicious rhythm.

But the hallway is deserted, minus Marisol, who says nothing.

God fuck it all, it’s just one of your hallucinations. You must say that last bit aloud, because she cocks her head to one side.

“Hallucinations?”

You rub at your temples absentmindedly.

“Yeah, I just…” You take a second to breathe. “I saw people looking at me, and then I heard them whispering all kinds of shit, and I can still hear them, and there’s nobody here, so…”

“People were looking at you,” Marisol says evenly. “Mostly since you looked like you were going to pass out.”

You hadn’t entertained that idea.

“Oh.”

She kneels down on the floor next to you, trying for one of her devil-may-care smiles, however strained it may seem.

“Wanna go back to your room?” she offers.

“I’m sorry for ruining your night.”

She puts a hand on your shoulder. “Don’t worry about it. I realized after last year that I didn’t want to go alone, so I probably would have been even more pissed if it was only me.”

“Or if you’d forced yourself to stay,” she adds. “I wasn’t trying to make you uncomfortable.”

The wind has stirred her hair into a mild tangle, frizz hanging about the straighter bits. She gazes down at her clothing, and her leg shakes a single time. Then, she sets her attention straight ahead again. 

She has not bothered to chide you for drinking on your medications, or to point out that part of the reason they’re not working fully is because you’ve been doing just that.

You get up, and take her by the elbow, and she reacts as if you’ve interrupted something. But not angrily. Not angrily at all.

“Let’s go upstairs,” you tell her. “We could talk. Or video games.”

Go Simon, paragon of coherent phrasing, soon to be Ivy League graduate. Brilliant.

She doesn’t comment on it, just quietly lets herself be led up to 6B5, as if you’re bringing her there for the first time. You lock the door behind her, and Krishna is still MIA. Whatever. Probably having wall-shattering sex with Katya.

Katya. Not Cat. Katya. Like high school, _like 1994, like…_

Your mind whites out, full of static, running the usual flashback subroutines. Any minute, you’ll hear the lilt of Carolyn’s laughter, the sound of her violet heels on the tile floor.

You will yourself back into the present and put on a pot of tea. Tea sounds good. 

Brandy sounds better, but knowing your shitty brain, it’ll only make everything worse. Imagine if the voices get louder. Imagine if Carolyn really does make an appearance, hallucinated or otherwise, it’s her birthday in a few days, after all.

Marisol pulls a mostly-empty bottle of wine and a PS1 controller out of her bag, plugging the latter into the console.

“Tekken 2?” you ask.

She nods.

Then, she strips down to her underwear, tossing her clothes and sign as far away as possible, seeming far more comfortable in her sports bra and panties. She pours the remainder of her wine into your empty lowball glass.

“I’m gonna kick your ass,” she grins. You snort.

“Yeah, maybe if I let you win.”

You two lean against each other, plotting out moves and mashing buttons.

Every so often, Marisol pauses the game, and says something like, _“…he was a varsity senior, what could I do later? As he said, I owed him, he basically rewrote my argument for the better.”_

It’s not a straight narrative like the story you made yourself tell from start to conclusion in Riverside Park. It’s more like a murder mystery, where you have to unite the pieces in order to understand.

_“..that’s the first time I ever left the state for a tournament. If Papi found out, I woulda been out of debate so fast…”_

Playing as Marshall Law, she deals a decisive kick to your Yoshimitsu, one that causes you to wince as it depletes half your health.

_“Anyway, he offered to help me construct an alternate interpretation. And mi hermano, he always told me, never go alone with a boy… I didn’t listen. Look at me, not listening right now. Estupida.”_

You do pause the game.

“You’re not stupid. You were never stupid,” you reply.

She shoots you a glare that could melt ice. You recoil.

Round 6 out of 9.

_“…like the drink would loosen me up, and it did, and he was all…”_

You defeat her for that round. She curls up and turns away.

_“…‘cause I didn’t fight hard enough.”_

You feel a prickling sensation down your back. You realize that you’re watching yourself through a magnifying glass. The same guilt. The same self-loathing, but superimposed upon someone else.

And that someone doesn’t deserve any of it.

“We never fight hard enough.” You put down your controller loudly enough to catch her attention. “It’s not on us to fight back, Mari. It’s on them. It’s always on them not to do it.”

She rolls over again, her expression skeptical, one hand thrown over her eyes. “You never thought it was on Carolyn.”

You shrug.

“Yeah, well, as you’ve said several times, I’m a fucking idiot. Bad example.”

She stares at nothing in particular, breathing softly, as if she wasn’t even listening. Her breath hitches, something strangled working its way out of her mouth.

For one scary moment, you’re terrified she’ll start crying. Not because you won’t be able to handle it, but because Marisol crying, that is one of those rare occurrences you never thought you’d live to see.

But she doesn’t, quite. She laughs, hard and bitter, and finishes her wine, mopping up her mouth with the back of her arm.

When she removes her glasses to wipe her eyes, you pretend not to notice. Maybe you unpause the game a little too soon, but she doesn’t protest. She merely redoubles her effort on kicking your ass clear to Westchester.

For the last few hours, you’d been marveling on how much stronger she was than you. There are no too-straight lines on her arms or legs. She does not have an entire liquor cabinet under her bed - as it turns out, that was Katya’s bottle of wine that she swiped.

However, something she points out near the end of her disjointed recollection stays with you more than the rest. A mental post-it note for further consideration.

“We compare ourselves to everyone, how much better we are. How much worse. And that’s the most fucked up thing, ‘cause we’re trained into it, like. What’s your GPA? What’s your SAT score? On a scale of dignified to trainwreck, how well did you handle this? You can’t do that. You’d drive yourself insane. Or, uh, more insane.” She hits the pause button on the console. “There’s no good or bad here with us, there just is.”

That’s probably true. Your therapist has probably given you a variation (or several) on the same theme. It means more coming from Marisol.

One of your usual sardonic bastard remarks occurs to you.  _Never get drunk with an aspiring lawyer, you’ll get philosophized at until your brain leaks out of your ears._ You say this to her, and she smiles.

“Don’t drink with a Physics major, they’re all fucking neurotic.”

She hugs you, and you let yourself accept it at last. Warmth, safety, and empathy.

Then, more gaming.

You unplug your PS1, plug in your ancient Sega Genesis and take turns playing zones in Sonic 2. Every time you die in the Aquatic Ruin Zone (several, never play this game under the influence), she calls you a moron.

She manages to lose 400 rings a single zone later, and not even in a boss battle. She swears with such fluid fluency that you can’t even begin to comprehend a word of it.

“Who’s the moron now?” you ask, from your lofty position on your bed, as she sits on the floor. Mockingly, she picks up the wine bottle like she might throw it at you. And dies again.

“You distracted me, you fuckass!”

“Yeah and you’re wasting continues!”

“We’re never gonna get to the Metropolis Zone at this rate.”

“You’re telling me.”

When Krishna finally ambles his way back to the right side of campus, he kindly refrains from asking you how the march went. He can probably tell from the miasma of ethanol that slapped him in the face when he walked in.

You notice that his sweatpants are on backwards.

And Marisol points this out with uncharacteristic amusement, given that she’s about to drown in oil while fighting Dr. Robotnik.

“How’d you even figure that, when you’re not even looking at me?” he wants to know.

She pauses the game and turns from the television. “Hijo de puta, they’re actually on backwards? Tell Cat I send my regards.”

You cackle so hard that tears form in your eyes. Krishna sits down beside Marisol in an offended huff. She hands him the controller, tells him to vent his frustration, and watches him die approximately eight times in rapid succession.

A regular evening in your room.

After Mari’s gone to sleep - if you give a sophomore half an Ativan, they’ll pass out for a while instead of jittering anxiously - Krishna wants to know the details.

“Not my story to tell, man. Not all of it.”

He nods respectfully. “I understand.”

You point to the pile of clothing lying in a heap on his side of the room, and then to your garbage can.

“Take out the trash, wouldja?”

He gives the clothes a once-over, nods, crams them into your trashcan, before taking everything out to the chute at the end of the hall, the one that leads to the incinerator.

That’s probably the best you can do for those.

In the afternoon, squinting against her hangover, Mari bitches about how she has to wear some of your clothes back to her dorm, and it’s going to look like she’s walk-of-shaming her way across campus.

You point out that she’s stumbled over to your building in nothing but a nightgown and Cat’s oversized boots, during a blizzard, because Krishna was at Dolo’s, Cat was at her brother’s, and you were depressively hammered. Oh yeah, and she’d been on her skateboard, carrying nothing but her ID, a PS1 controller, and a bag of hot cheese popcorn.

Besides, it’s usual-type bitching, not an actual conniption. 

And she lets slip a small smile of relief as she rolls up the cuffs on a pair of your pants.

“Thanks, asshole,” she says, kissing you on the forehead. 

You flip her off.

“Yeah, yeah. Get the hell out of my room so I can have my bed back.”

Krishna stares between the pair of you in utter confusion.

* * *

Years pass.

When you see Carolyn’s face in the eyes of certain students, you text Mari and she drives you to City Island to get fried scallops and pina coladas after 9th period lets out. Every 18th of March, when you insist performing on what she calls your “inalienable right to get falling-down wasted”, there’s no real vitriol in that proclamation. She, Cat, and Krish ensure that you get back to your apartment with a minimum of hysterics at the bartender involved. And Mari always stays until you fall asleep.

When Marisol refuses to sleep anytime the debate team is on an away tournament, pacing the halls of their accommodations like a sentinel, doing random room inspections to check for contraband liquor, Masae admonishes her upon her return. Tells her that she’s going to drop dead of exhaustion like that. Who gives a shit if the students are drinking? They’re always drinking.

“You remember what debate team was like in your day,” Ms. Sakamoto says, joking in her ignorance. “Don’t spoil it for the next generation!”

Marisol’s lips tighten into a furious white line. You inject yourself into the conversation, offer Mari first dibs on the coffee pot and ask her which students won trophies.

Sometimes, passing value judgments on your strategies is perilous. 

Sometimes, there is neither good nor bad. There just is. 

To quote one of Cat’s favorite books: so it goes. 


End file.
